There are many onerous duties that go hand in sticky little hand with parenthood. The early days are notoriously rife with them.
When our daughter was a helpless three-month old, for instance, stricken with her first cold, unable to blow, snort or otherwise manage her own mucus, I once (and only once) stepped in and sucked the snot from her tiny nose.
Few of child-rearing’s duties, though, are quite as grueling as one that comes a few years along the track, one I will face tonight, which will call on every ounce of resilience and courage I can muster.
Sitting through the annual primary school Production.
I’m not sure how these things roll in the upper echelons, among those private schools that boast cutting edge theatrical facilities—I imagine (bitterly nurturing the chip on my shoulder) the parents at those places to enjoy slick, brisk musical spectacles from the comfort of plush auditoria, pithy and illuminating dramas with Broadway-calibre choreography and lighting design— but we cash-strapped many with kids at government schools can expect them to be Rottweiler-rough around the edges, and to go on pretty much forever.
Few of child-rearing’s duties, though, are quite as grueling as one that comes a few years along the track, one I will face tonight, which will call on every ounce of resilience and courage I can muster.
Essentially a vehicle for the year-six seniors to strut their stuff, the show still needs to accommodate a cast of hundreds. So disparate song and dance routines get shoe-horned into baggy plots and hitched to tried, tested and ritually abused genres. (Tonight we have a super-hero yarn, last year pirates, you get the gist). The youngest performers often appear in arbitrary animal costumes, to maximise the aaaah-factor.
This shapeless narrative soufflé is then peppered with tortuous, uncomprehendingly delivered puns, designed to get the grown-ups guffawing and groaning in the all-purpose gym-hall aisles, and served up between changes of scenery that take about as long as the action itself (and are sometimes funnier and more gripping).
I have one child in prep and another in grade two.
This morning, during school drop-off, in anticipation of opening night, a couple of first-timer parents from the former’s class asked me what it was going to be like. I was reminded of the drunken guests in The Deer Hunter wedding scene, set to head off for war in the morning, asking for the lowdown on ‘Nam of the green beret who’s shown up at the reception.
My response, too, was a thousand-yard-stare. (Though I withheld from growling “F*** it” into my bourbon). Like the wedding guests in that epic, casually racist movie, those poor saps will find out for themselves soon enough.
It’s not as though attendance of The Production can be avoided. Because if you fail to show up at one of these things, it’s a safe bet that your absence will be one of the most keenly recalled episodes of your ingrate offspring’s childhood.
Despite all the clumsy sight-gags, flimsy scenery, missed cues, butchered tunes and mumbled punchlines, or maybe because of them, there is something profoundly moving about a primary school show.
The only thing I remember about my own primary school’s Nativity play is looking out at the audience, forlornly seeking my dad’s face. When I couldn’t find it, I had to hold back the tears, scarcely keeping it together among my dozen or so fellow shepherds (at least I’d been spared the ultimate ignominy, of playing a tree – in your face, Matthew Senton, my boyhood’s bete-noir), until my father, who’d been there all along, had to half get up from his seat, and give me a reassuring wave.
(Strange thing is, even though I know he was there, I still kind of resent him for putting me through that – takes an ingrate offspring to know one, I guess…).
So I’ll be there tonight, of course (closing night is for suckers - the final thank-you speeches adding agonising, endless miles to the marathon), and hope that our seats (which we had to book online, straight away – I mean, what is this, a shambolic school show or a Led Zeppelin reunion?) put us comfortably in our kids’ sightlines - though I’m prepared to get up and wave if I have to.
And despite my grouch-schtick, I know I’ll have a ball.
Despite all the clumsy sight-gags, flimsy scenery, missed cues, butchered tunes and mumbled punchlines, or maybe because of them, there is something profoundly moving about a primary school show.
Knowing that this year’s incidental supporting characters in animal costumes will all too soon take on the leading roles, as they pass through the innocence of primary school towards the hazards of high school, and on into the uncertainties of adulthood, gives the whole affair an edge that’s kinda heartrending.
Bittersweet. Like life. Like baby-snot.
Plus, some of those puns are so awful, they’re great. That’s entertainment.
